The Stress Chronicles

My oh my. Life is funny sometimes, huh?

I fully intend on putting up some recaps from our west coast trip because we ate some RIDICULOUSLY good food out there, but things have gone a bit haywire around here. Those might have to wait until next week.

We arrived home from vacation last week to find our letter from our landlord saying that we have 60 days to vacate the apartment.

I’m sorry, WHAT?

We love our apartment. It’s not just some crappy place we found and pay rent for, it’s home. We’ve settled in, and we really thought we would stay there until we bought something. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Our landlord has decided to renovate the entire place (it’s an older house, but it’s charming and lovely!), in order to be able to charge higher rent. I get it, he needs to make money, but that doesn’t make it any less frustrating for us!

So since Sunday, I’ve emailed about 9.2 million places, and have seen 7 condos, 11 apartments and counting. Some have been great, some have been horrible, and will someone explain WHY it is so difficult to find a place that has laundry in the building?!? I’m going out of my mind, as you can probably tell. As of now, we have a few leads, but nothing concrete, which means that I’ve been in 100% stress mode since the weekend. My stomach has been in knots, I’ve cried several times, and I’ve started to feel a rage instead of hope whenever I find a new apartment to email about.

I know, I know. First world problems, right? We have a roof over our heads, and when it comes down to it, we will have another roof over our heads one way or another. It may not be perfect, but it’ll work out eventually. I just need to figure out a way to control this stress in the meantime, because I’m pretty sure it’s killing me.

I’ve been seriously fatigued, irritable, sensitive, and not sleeping. Stress is like a vicious cycle that wreaks havoc on your body, and it’s like a horrible Catch 22: Stress is keeping me from sleeping, and the lack of sleep is causing my body a whole lot more stress.

I’ve been trying to stay sane through workouts, and the launch of my new Group Fitness program, Rondeau Group Fitness, and these things are helping! For an hour on Tuesday and Thursday morning, I was able to escape from my buzzing mind and just focus on running the class, which was a total blast. Yesterday I even took a little bit of time right after bootcamp to head out and run some stairs on my own. It was just a little 30 minute piece of time for me, but it was time when I wasn’t thinking about anything but my breathing and the rhythm of my steps. I wasn’t hunched in front of a computer screen, reading apartment listing after apartment listing, feeling the bile rise in my throat as it seems like less and less places are available each day.

Things I need to do include meditating and focusing on positive energy, this I know. Focusing on the positive will help to bring a positive outcome, right? That’s what they say anyway. Keeping my fingers crossed that we find something soon, because as of right now not only do we not know where we’re moving, but we don’t know WHEN we’re moving. Some are available right now, some July 1, some August 1. It really is just a giant cluster.

I just need to remind myself to keep breathing, stay calm, and know that it will work out because it has to. Working out helps to some extent, but I also don’t want to push too much right now because exercise is another form of stress on your body — usually a good stress, but there is a fine line when you’re also going through other stressful life events. Keeping my workouts light and about my sanity is the game plan right now — yoga, easy runs, even just some walking might ease my mind a little bit.

Readers, do you use workouts to deal with stress or do you sometimes feel that it’s too much on top of whatever’s going on? Do you have a “de-stress” routine for these times?

6 thoughts on “The Stress Chronicles”

Hi friend! I’m sorry you are going through this. It’s essentially the exact same thing that happened to Tim and I when we got our letter of non renewal in March saying we had to be out of our apartment by May 31st. The search process is incredibly frustrating! A friend recommended the site PadMapper to me, which I recommend – you can search by a map and it pulls in all the listings from all websites. I would also post on social media if you haven’t already – sometimes people know someone who need to fill their apartment. You never know! Good luck and try to breathe!

I do use workouts to relieve stress, but there was one week in May where I felt so stressed between moving, wedding planning, and work that my body literally rejected exercise. I stuck to light cardio and yoga that week, and it helped!

Ahh Hi Athena!! I know you just went through this, so you totally get it! Thanks so much for the tip — I’ll definitely check out PadMapper. Once we just have a couple answers I’ll feel fine, it’s just the not knowing that’s killing me! I guess that’s the control freak in me 🙂

I can 100% relate! We recently found out we had to vacate our apartment with 2 months notice and we’ve been going crazy trying to find a place. We saw some good ones, but they all seemed to be missing one vital component like air conditioning or parking or laundry. Luckily we found a place we’re extremely happy with just last week. So just hold tight – you’ll find something soon! 🙂

Ahhh thanks for your encouragement!! We’ve actually had a couple that we thought we had, and they snatched right out from under our fingertips. There have been many tears! I’m sorry you had to go through the same thing — what the heck is going on with these landlords? I swear if I ever become a landlord I will NEVER do this to someone (unless they are unruly tenants) 🙂

Ugh. that is terrible!! Roberto and I are in the process of trying to figure out what we want to do in terms of moving in together- whether it’s renting an apartment somewhere or, giving notice to the tenants in one of the buildings they own to move in there… which after reading your post makes me not want to do that! I just started looking today and it’s not fun, but at least neither of us are on a time crunch since he’s living in one of his apartments he owns and i’m renting from him in one building he owns. I’m sure you’ll find something that works until you buy something! On the bright side- with all the new apartment buildings going up in the city that’s got to open up some other buildings!

Well at least if you do give tenants notice, I’d try to give them like 90 days… giving 60 was REALLY stressful in this market!! The only problem was that there’s so little right now in terms of open properties — people just aren’t moving. At least like you said you guys aren’t on a time crunch, so you can take the time to find what you want and what fits you best!!

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Welcome to I Train Therefore I Eat! I'm Stephanie Rondeau MS, ATC, CSCS, CHC, and I'm a certified health coach and personal trainer in Boston, MA. My goal is to motivate and inspire, and to help people lead healthier, happier lives, free of food guilt and deprivation.I offer personal training, bootcamp classes, and health coaching services both locally and for distance clients. I hope you enjoy what you find here, and please feel free to contact me for more information on services. Welcome, and I hope you stick around for a while!